<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Empty Calories - Flock of Ravens by alephthirteen</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27516478">Empty Calories - Flock of Ravens</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen'>alephthirteen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>In Every Lifetime I Will Find You [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supergirl (TV 2015)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Because They're All Pretty, Brainy is Sketchy, But They're Smart Little Clones, Bystanders Hospitalized Due to Number of Sexy Smirks, F/F, F/M, Fake Identities for Everybody, For Evil Reasons, It's a Lot for Kara, It's an Orphan Black AU, Lillian Cloned Lena a Whole Lot, Mistaken identities, Nia Has Hidden Depths, So Now There's a Whole Herd of Lena's, and lonely, and sad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 04:48:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,096</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27516478</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Liberty really messed things up.  Supergirl attracts gun-toting protestors everywhere she goes.  Saving a little girl from a bus is harder when Kara's staring down the barrel of some mouth-breather's AR-15 for his "citizen's arrest" when she's done.</p><p>Thank goodness for Gotham!  Where the crooks are unambiguous, the terrorists over-the-top drama queens, the police useless and the female-presenting bat-vigilantes of all sorts are always happy for a girls night out...FOR JUSTICE.</p><p>She has a squad, she has the hottest girlfriend ever, and really, Kara shouldn't worry.  Except she keeps seeing Lena in places where Lena isn't.  In nail salons.  In dive bars.  On the train tracks...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>In Every Lifetime I Will Find You [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014447</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Empty Calories - Flock of Ravens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Where Kara makes some new friends and Lena doesn't look both ways.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Gotham - Harbor District</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Six naked, shaking women stand before Kara.  Masks obscure their faces.  Perverse reinterpretations of a nun's cowl, all-latex and wide, hide their hair.  She can't take the masks off because there's no reason to doubt Roullette boast that the ball gags are explosive.  The masks are either depleted uranium or tungsten.  With lead, she can power through.  Push out more until enough goes through to scatter back and she can see grainy shadows of what's underneath.  Not this time.  Kara would pass out from the migraine long before she pushed her X-Ray vision that far and the extra particle flow needed might harm the prisoners.</p><p>She's spent plenty of time around Jess and Andrea and Kelly and her sister are practically living together but that doesn't mean she's memorized the furrows in their bones or the unique little grooves and divots and shivering veins that make every human she looks at so unique and precious.</p><p>All six are scared out of their minds so there's no telling heartbeats apart.</p><p>If she could identify them, Roulette would already be on the ground</p><p>Roulette circles her like an eel, slimy and smiling.   </p><p>Two are friends and confidants.  One is James Olsen's kid sister.  The woman Alex won't admit she has the biggest crush on.</p><p>The other three were picked to be lookalikes.  Decoys.  There are two sleek, slim black women.  Either could be Kelly Olsen.  Two compact, toned women of Chinese heritage.  Small in frame but toned and sculpted.  EIther could be Jess Haung.  Two statuesque Latinas.  Either could be Andrea.</p><p>Kara has to keep her buyer role long enough for Maggie Sawyer to set up a small army outside this warehouse.  She posed as a perverted tech mogul.  Her clothing was dumpy enough and the haircut short enough that no one but Roulette realized she was a woman.</p><p>After the tour of the place, with cages full of naked, sobbing teens and women, some chained in place so they can't damage themselves and some of them 'used up' and now nothing but shells, being mounted by goon after goon, Kara is angrier than she ever was on Red Kryptonite.  This time, it feels <em>true.  </em>Killing every single one of them feels <em>right </em>and that's scarier.</p><p>"I can only afford three of them, I told you.  Just let my friends go, and I'll buy the other three."</p><p>"Well," Roulette laughs.  "The rules are simple.  I mean, I opened the packaging.  So they're not worth much.  One time offer."</p><p>
  <em>Meaning she'll kill the spares.</em>
</p><p>"You're going to give me what I want, <em>Supergirl."</em></p><p>"Blackbird," Kara scolds.  "Mind yourself around your betters, <em>criminal.</em>"</p><p>Roulette huffs.</p><p>"As if you've never broken a law."</p><p>Kara's hand shoots out and snares Roulette's wrist.</p><p>"Do you know how closely a woman like Lena is watched?" she whispers. "Someone in the FBI probably knows about every crack on her favorite harness.  Every wrinkle in the silicone.  Every filthy thing she's ever asked me to do to that tight...pink...slippery...shivering little <em>gash </em>between her legs."</p><p>"No, Ronnie.  If they wanted to come after Lena, they would have.  Given what she knows about you, you'd be her personal pussy cleaner in general population.  She'd be out in three on good behavior and you'd be begging her for conjugal visits when you're ninety."</p><p>Nostrils flaring, Roulette draws her free hand back.  Her fist connects with Kara's jaw. </p><p>Roulette shrieks.  Bones snap, Kara counts little noises like popcorn popping.  Forty-three little pops.  Not bad, given that the human hand has twenty-seven bones.</p><p>It probably looked cooler in Roulette's head, punching Kara.</p><p>"Hmm...not smart.  Maybe that's why you're her <em>ex," </em>Kara reminds her.</p><p>It's so easy to deal with Lena's less-than-savory exes.  Really, she should do it for free.</p><p>"Now.  You lie there and moan in pain," Kara tells Roulette.  "I'm going to inspect the merchandise."</p><p>She looks them over.  Roulette's finders did good work.  She steps in front of each woman and peers through the mask.  Two eerie, arctic pairs of blue eyes.  Proud.  Haughty.  Two keen, dark eyes, narrowed in anger.  Two soulful brown eyes.  Pleading.  Bottomless.  Kara understands Alex's crush better now.</p><p>"You know what?"</p><p>"What?" Roulette huffs.</p><p>Kara look over her shoulder and pours her heat vision into the cement just past roulette's hand.  It melts almost instantly and Roulette yelps, pulling her hand closer.  Kara turns from the prisoners, circling Roulette and cutting a triangular prison into the cement.  Each trench is two feet wide, thousands of degrees of raw heat.  Roulette couldn't get out even if she was willing to lose a foot or a hand.</p><p>"You're going to tell me which is which.  I'm going to take my <em>friends </em>home and pay for the others."</p><p>She drops an index card with the code for the bitcoin.  The bitcoin that the FBI or L-Corp cybersecurity can have traced before Roulette makes it to an airport.</p><p>"Gesture of good faith.  We have a deal."</p><p>"Fuck you."</p><p>"So not my type."</p><p>She slams her fist into the floor and the cherry red pools of molten concrete shiver.</p><p>"As you can tell, your power dampener didn't work.  Probably shouldn't buy your supervillian shit on eBay, Roulette.  Which means I can turn every single goon here into red glop, bust open the pens, memorize every file on your computers faster than they can delete themselves, and put my hand through your ribs before you realized I'd left the room."</p><p>Roulette shivers.</p><p>"Fair enough," Kara sighs.</p><p>Kara reaches into the messenger bag she brought.</p><p>She pulls out a gold medallion with a gleaming emerald in the center.  As soon as it hits open air, it swings towards one of the prisoners.  Kara walks over and reaches around the woman's neck.</p><p>"Nod if you've worn this before," Kara whispers.</p><p>A nod.</p><p>Kara clicks the clasp together and Andrea Rojas melts into the shadow, leaving only her masks and a booby-trapped ball gag behind.  Kara glances at the timer before she tosses it into Roulette's little cage.</p><p>"You could probably save yourself by pushing that into the concrete," Kara calls over her shoulder.</p><p>There's a shriek of pain followed by a muffled whump.  Roulette sobs and whines.</p><p>She glances at the tablet Roulette gave her and presses the button to 'buy' number four.  The mask stops blinking.  Kara reaches up to the leather straps.  The woman under it is younger than Andrea, probably sixteen to nineteen, made up to look thirty.</p><p>"What's your name?" Kara asks.</p><p>The answer is in Portuguese.  Marciela.  Kara asks for more and Marciela's face lights up bright as the sun when she realizes Kara can understand her.  She babbles, words spilling out faster than she can form sentences.  About visiting Rio with a school group and stopping at church to confess on her way back to the hotel.</p><p>"Shh," Kara coos.</p><p>She helps Marciela stumble through a Hail Mary in her native language, then asks for an address and a name and opens the note app on the tablet.</p><p>She turns to the black women.</p><p>"Do you know Alex has <em>the biggest </em>crush on you?" she jokes.  "Suprised she didn't knock over the Jenga tower and mount you in the living room."</p><p>One doesn't react.  The other fidgets in her handcuffs.</p><p>Kara buys number two.  Number three sighs in relief.  Kelly Olsen is no lightweight.  Ex-Army, three tours.  Worked as a medic.  She can play along until Maggie's bomb squad and get that off.</p><p>"Lena canceled her therapy appointment."</p><p>An angry--if gagged--huff tells her <em>exactly </em>which one is Jess Haung.  Kara's pretty sure that was a gagged version of 'motherfucker' she just heard.</p><p>Kara buys the other one and unclips her mask.  This decoy can't possibly be eighteen and there's a little facepainted logo of the UCLA football team on her left cheek.</p><p>"You good?" she asks the decoy.</p><p>"Can I shove a chainsaw up her vadge?" the stranger demands, nodding at Roulette.</p><p>"After trial," Kara chortles.  "I'll get you back in time for English 101, promise."</p><p>The girl huffs.</p><p>"Now I hate <em>you </em>too," she teases.</p><p>"Right then, Ladies.  The entire GCPD is about to bust in here, along with some people in funny hats."</p><p>Kara slides the silent alarm clicker out of her sleeve and presses it three times.  Explosions sound in all directions as doors are breached and flashbangs go off and SWAT teams shout at surprised thugs, pulling them off the workplace perks.  From the screaming, some took the chance to kick them in the balls.</p><p>A shadow of black and red drops from the rafters without so much as a whisper of noise.  Human ears would never have caught it.</p><p>"Batwoman."</p><p>"Supe-"</p><p>Batwoman huffs.  Even with the voice modulator scrambling her tone, it's adorable.</p><p>"Blackbird."</p><p>"Funny meeting you here.  I'm sure Detective Sawyer has everything under control."</p><p>There's no <em>spoken </em>response but pale cheeks pink up. One armored glove surrounds the other and fiddles with something on the right hand's ring finger.</p><p>
  <em>Cute!</em>
</p><p>Kara jerks a thumb over her shoulder.</p><p>"Sorry I forgot to get you a wedding present.  Can I interest you in a scratch-and-dent sex trafficker?" Kara asks.</p><p>Roulette is kicking weakly against an EMT who is bandaging her left hand which isn't even that badly burned from the look of it.</p><p>"Well, it's not another toaster."</p><p>"No.  It's <em>justice," </em>Kara snarls, half-swallowing every word and grinding her teeth so she sounds like Batman.</p><p>Batwoman lets out a loud, rude, full-body cackle.  Once she gets upright again, she offers her gauntlet for a fistbump.</p><p>"What can I say?" Kara hollers, walking backwards towards the door.  "I know what ladies like."</p><p>-----</p><p>Hanging out with the bat-ladies started as an easy way for Kara to get her heroing fix in after Lex's pet president made Supergirl persona non grata.  Even in disguise, no one in National City bought it.  No sooner did she help the lady to her feet but some asshole in a red baseball cap would pull a pistol he didn't know how to use and try for a citizen's arrest.</p><p>Cassandra Cain helped Kara with her new costume, basing it on her own.  Intimidating.  Anonymous.  Unreadable.  All black with a finish slick and shiny as oil.  The synthetic crystalline dust on the armor shimmers faintly like a beetle's shell.  Rather than a cape, a moldable pair of wings cut out of ceramic Kara made at the Fortress.  A helmet of electronic glass that can go from invisibly transparent to opaque and blood-red.  She keeps it opaque until the bad guys are dealt with then switches off the tint so she can soothe the victims.  Really is the best of both worlds.</p><p>They wanted to call her Raven but Kara shot them down.  Too confusing.  Too close.  Too precious.  Lena's hair spreads over the pillow like a raven's wing.  It cascades down her shoulders on weekend mornings, unkempt and dancing like a flock settling to roost.  She's been calling Lena her little raven far too long to cross it with hero business.</p><p>Kara loves helping out her favorite bats. Usually means a tag along from Orphan, Spoiler, and Batgirl.  It's fun to have a girl's night out, even if that involves trawling back alleys for Gothamites who think that other people's wallets and girlfriends belong to them.</p><p>She minds having to take the extremely sketchy Gotham to Newark train until she's far enough away that Batman's tech is unable to detect her takeoff.</p><p>It only adds forty minutes to her commute but that's forty minutes of licking the sweat from Lena's skin.  Forty minutes of molten heat fluttering around Kara's fingers as those high, gasping moans spill from her throat.  Forty minutes of Lena's heartbeats at a distance when she could hear them skin-to-skin.</p><p>The conductor walks down the aisles, telling them Newark is in three minutes.  The station is nearly empty.  It is two in the morning, after all.  There's a brunette at one of the far tracks.  Cello-shaped.  Ethereally pale where she stands in a gap between the lights.</p><p>She turns to look behind her. </p><p>It's Lena.</p><p>A train thunders through at speed, one not meant to stop here.  Lena slides over the fence and steps onto the tracks.</p><p>"No!"</p><p>Kara takes flight.  She has to get to Lena.  Wrap her up.  Take the collision into her body.  Fly her home, ask what's wrong, promise to do whatever it takes.</p><p>Something hits her from behind.  Steel squeals and shrieks.  Dust rises in a cloud that hides the night sky.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><h2>Like it?  Come holler at me about fanfic!</h2><p><br/><strong>Tumblr </strong>(the hub of the whole operation)<br/><br/><a href="https://alephthirteen-writes.tumblr.com/">https://alephthirteen-writes.tumblr.com/</a><br/><br/><strong>Twitter </strong></p><p> </p><p>  <a href="https://www.twitter.com/AlephWrites">https://www.twitter.com/AlephWrites</a></p><p> </p><p><strong>Discord </strong>(I'm on most of the day, mute it at night)<br/><a href="https://discord.gg/j4QrQF4"><br/>
https://discord.gg/j4QrQF4</a><br/><br/><strong>Kryptowiki </strong>(codex for my DC-universe fics with expanded<br/>info, sections per story)<br/><br/><a href="https://kryptowiki.stufftoread.com">https://kryptowiki.stufftoread.com</a><br/><br/></p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>